The present invention relates to an optical connector connecting apparatus which is excellent in reproducibility of a connection loss to be measured, and is used for the connection of a multi-core optical connector having guide pins. Also, the invention relates to an optical connector connecting apparatus and an optical connector connecting method in which an optical path switching, excellent in reproducibility, is effected.
Conventionally, for measuring a connection loss of an optical connector, a pair of optical connectors 61 and 62 are guided through guide pins 64 as shown in FIG. 14, and are connected together, and then as shown in FIG. 15, these connectors 61 and 62 thus connected are fixed together by a resilient clip 63. With this connection method, however, the fixing by the clip 63 must be done manually, so that much labor and time have been required, and another drawback is that the reproducibility of the measured value has been poor.
Therefore, in order to overcome these drawbacks, there have been proposed connection apparatuses, using a general-purposed robot or an X-Y-Z stage movable in three axes directions.
The above-mentioned connecting apparatuses using the robot or the X-Y-Z stage are of such a construction that optical connectors are connected by guide pins or a ferrule, and therefore the positioning of the guide pins must be done with a high precision on the order of not more than a micron. Therefore, much labor and time have been required for the positioning, and besides the positioning control mechanism has become bulky, which has disadvantageously resulted in high costs.
Further, the connecting surfaces of the optical connectors have fine depressions and projections, and it is possible that when these connectors are connected together, a gap on the order of 0.1 .mu.m to several tens of .mu.m will be formed between optical fiber cores of the connectors. Therefore, in order to prevent a deterioration of a connection loss and reflection characteristics which are caused by this gap, it is a common practice to fill this gap with a matching agent which matches the refractive index with the optical fiber core. The matching agent is manually applied to connecting surfaces, using an applicator 65 as shown in FIG. 16 or a toothpick. However, much labor and time have been required for such a manual application of the matching agent.